with Stephen Foehr
We are delighted to welcome author Stephen Foehr to Omnimystery News today.
Stephen's new mystery novel is Water War: Snake Valley Okies vs. Las Vegas (Jiri Vanek Publishing; January 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with him to talk about it.
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Omnimystery News: Water War is centered on the water rights between Las Vegas and the ranchers of Snake Valley. What drew you to this issue?
Photo provided courtesy of
Stephen Foehr
Stephen Foehr: The contest over the Snake Valley Aquifer water between Las Vegas and the Snake Valley ranchers gave a localized framework to bigger issues, such as rights of individuals' vs Great Authority (State) interests; how can individuals push back; the increasing rift in the trust between citizens and the government; and all this wrapped in a love story of how to say "I love you" without using the word "love," which in itself can cause conflict.
Water scarcity, and the control of that natural resource, is increasingly becoming a flashpoint of conflict. Battle over water is part of the Syrian civil war, the armed fight in Mali, tensions between Pakistan and India, clashes in Brazil's interior and, in the United States, confrontation between states, cities and farmers/ranchers, corporations versus cities and rural interests. Various reports by the United Nations and think tanks predict that control of water will be a primary source of political upheaval, social unrest, poverty, inequality, spread of disease and armed conflicts in the near future.
Water scarcity and the fight over water has all the elements for a novel; drama, tension, conflict, little vs big guy, colorful characters and settings, and the dilemma of resolution.
OMN: You started your career as a police reporter in Chicago. What prompted you to transition to writing books?
SF: I found newspaper work to be a rather small canvas. At the City News Bureau, I hung out in police stations for eight hours at night scooping up information to meet the constant deadline. The City News Bureau was an infamous baptism-by-fire for journalists where, without any training, you were thrown into the fray of hard-knocks Chicago journalism. To survive, I learned to be aggressive, to impersonate, to bluff, to ask hard questions and expect an answer, and adopt the attitude of "As a journalist, a representative of the people, I have the right to be in your face, to invade your space, and demand that you answer me." Useful but somewhat limiting in learning the nuances of a story.
Hard new reporting limits your language. Imagination is exorcised. You think in declarative sentences. Mood and color and narrative are reduced to a couple words, a sentence or two at best. I wanted more room to move around in, more space for the story and for me, as a writer, to explore and discover. I shifted from hard news to feature profiles and travel writing for magazines. Like a fledging testing out my new wings, I sought bigger skies and that was writing a book.
OMN: Initially you wrote non-fiction. How did you transition to writing novels?
SF: Writing a novel was always my Holy Grail. I'd die a happy man if I could do that even once, or so I thought. My first books were non-fiction: a book on Taj Mahal, the legendary bluesman; a series for Sanctuary Publishing, London, using music as the vehicle to explore a place, its people and culture. I wrote books set in Jamaica, Cuba and Nashville. I had spent months researching a book on New Orleans music, under contract with Sanctuary. I night before I was to leave for New Orleans, I got a call from London informing me that the accountants had pulled the plug on the series. The book was off.
I had nine months worth of research. Now what? Well, turn the non-fiction into fiction. That shouldn't be too difficult. After all, I had been experimenting with using fiction techniques in my non-fiction. So I set off on my quest to write a novel, Storyville, The eternal triangle of love, sex and money. What a humbling experience.
I discovered that writing fiction was a master's class compared to journalism 101. The skills required much more than just assembling information in an entertaining and informative way. The writing habits I absorbed as a journalist were a hindrance and had to be deconstructed to open my style, my ear, my sensibilities. I've had a steep learning curve and have not seen top of that curve and probably ever will. Which is good. The demands of fiction writing keep my interest; it's a life-long education.
OMN: What are the possible ramifications of water scarcity if environmental change is not addressed?
SF: The western United States, where I live, is in the midst of a 16-year-drought. Cities are rescinding water allotments usually given to farmers because the urban areas need the water. Ranchers have been selling off their herds. Slaughterhouses in Texas have gone out of business. The drought is the cause of an increase of hundreds of cases of coccidioidomysocis, known as valley fever, in California and Arizona. The drought is a major contributing factor to the devastating forest fires in recent years and to environmental destruction that has a detrimental effect on wildlife. The conservation efforts by cities and states may not be, probably are not, enough to reverse the trend. Experts predict that the negative impacts will increase in the coming years.
I'm gradually leaning into the position that the question is not how to counter the environmental changes but how to survive the conditions. Perhaps, as experts warn, we have passed the tipping point. Adapting to, not reversing, the environmental changes may become by necessity the new lifestyle. Right now this drought is largely invisible to most people: we still have green lawns, water restrictions are mild to non-existent, no dust storms blot out the sun as in the Dust Bowl years. Yet, the impact on people's lives is very real. That's the story to be written.
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In his career, Stephen Foehr has been a newspaper reporter, an editor, a freelance writer and an author. This background has given him experience working as a staff member and as an independent contractor capable of conceiving, executing and delivering on deadline the articles assigned to him or ones he conceived.
For more information about the author and his work, please visit his website at StephenFoehr.com or find him on Facebook.
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Water War: Snake Valley Okies vs. Las Vegas
Stephen Foehr
A Mystery Novel
Water is the life blood the individual rancher’s way of life; Las Vegas wants the water for development to expand its tax base. Stet, leader of the ranchers, embodies Old West values and uses high-tech methods to stop the pipeline to the aquifer. The Lounge Lizards, two Las Vegas cops, try to remove Stet as the opposition leader by framing him for a car bombing and a murder.
While on the lam hiding out in "safe ranches", Stet and his wife Ali find new and creative ways to say I love you without using the word love.
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